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The ICZ company belongs to the top system integrators in the Czech Republic. Thanks to its division focused on e-health it ranks among the leading companies in the field of hospital information systems (IS) on the local market. In 2006 the company turnover reached CZK 1 billion. I discussed the division history and its R&D activities with its product manager, Michal Schmidt.

He originally worked as a programmer in the state company Geofyzika. The opportunity to run his own business after 1989 led him and two other colleagues to join the SET joint stock company that won the tender for an information system in a newly built hospital in Breclav. At that time hospitals were introducing their first complex computer systems and so SET could build its system from scratch according to its ideas and without being limited by a reverse compatibility.

The development in a big team required using a CASE tool which turned out to be rather complicated. That´s why Michal Schmidt leaves at the turn of 1992-93 he and other co-workers set up the AMIS company focused on building a complex information system for hospitals. With no bank loans, the company establishes itself on a market and gains positive references from five hospitals. Step by step, the company employs nearly one hundred people and belongs to three most important players on the market.

Ambitions to grow faster lead the management to a next strategic change. At the turn of 1999-2000, AMIS is invited to merge with the company ICZ within one of the largest mergers on the Czech IT market. Altogether 17 small and medium companies (among others SA&S, Decros and Internet servis) merge and then sign a contract on foreign investment with Raiffeisen Private Equity Management. Most employees of the e-health division are located in Brno and the division employs altogether 80 people, some of them work in Prague and Pilsen.

The company research and development has been running for some years in a close cooperation with the academic sector, above all with Masaryk University (MU). One example was the Hypermedata project that guaranteed a data exchange among hospitals. It was co-funded from the 4th Framework Programme and led by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK.

In late 1990s the pilot project Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) was successfully carried out for the Brno academic metropolitan network. As hospitals generate an extensive amount of data and not every department has a sufficient capacity of its own equipment available, some departments are provided, in cooperation with MU, with a complete outsourcing of long-term data storage (e.g. related to computer tomography and X-ray appliances). That shows universities represent for ICZ not only a possible source of new employees but also a client and a supplier.

In AMIS systems were developed only for individual hospitals, these days ICZ clients also consist of health insurance companies, regions, private chains of hospitals and state health institutions like the Ministry of Health Care or the Sanitary services. Nowadays, tens of hospitals use complex solutions including the clinic system, PACS and integrated ERP applications. In cooperation with the Austrian SYSTEMA company a process oriented clinic IS of a new generation is being developed and gradually implemented at the University hospital of Brno as the first application in the Czech Republic.

ICZ runs a major part of national health registers and cooperates on a long term project of the DRG classification system which includes individual treatment cases into groups on the basis of information about a patient, his condition and the treatment provided.

Apart from the Hypermedata project, the ICZ e-health division has been invited to four other project proposals in the 5th and 6th Framework Programmes supporting research and development and has exploited project co-funding from the structural funds. The company welcomes cooperation in the IS development in the area of e-health, for example with Java based technology.

Contact

Michal Schmidt
Tel: +420 244 100 208
E-mail: michal.schmidt@i.cz
www.i.cz

Michal Schmidt graduated from the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Brno University of Technology. From 1985 he worked as a programmer in the state company Geofyzika. Starting from 1991, he has been involved in health care informatics. First as a programmer and an analyst in the SET company, from 1993 as a co-owner of the AMIS company where he led of a hospital information system development and then worked as the executive director. After the merger with ICZ, he holds the position of the product manager of the e-health division.